Lizard Squad: Kim Dotcom Plays Christmas Hero After Gaming Attacks
— -- Call it a belated Christmas season miracle.
This is a story of an eccentric Internet entrepreneur who singlehandedly may have managed to save gamers around the world -- and the Christmas season -- from a hacking collective known as Lizard Squad.
Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's PlayStation Network both suffered outages Christmas Day that extended into today, frustrating gamers who were unable to enjoy their consoles for the holiday.
It seems all it took for Lizard Squad to call off the attacks the group said it perpetrated on the gaming networks was a little diplomacy from MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom, according to Dotcom and Lizard Squad tweets.
The multimillionaire, who is based in New Zealand, is embattled in his own legal woes. He is expected to find out early next year whether he'll be extradited to the United States, where he is wanted on charges related to piracy, copyright infringement and racketeering.
(Dotcom, who changed his name from Kim Schmitz, has said he is not guilty.)
Under the deal Lizard Squad said it reached with Dotcom, the group received 3,000 premium MegaPrivacy vouchers from Dotcom's company, which allows it end-to-end encryption and secure storage services.
While it appeared both networks were still dark this morning, Lizard Squad tweeted it had stopped its "distributed denial of service" attacks and said the current downtime is "just the aftermath."
